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Feature Pack: Regular Expressions

Regular Expressions, also referred to as Regex, are strings using specific syntax in order to match certain chunks of text. Regular Expressions were first featured in the Unix shell. They are implemented in most programming languages allowing for powerful string matching.

Learning Regular Expression Syntax

The first steps to learning how to use regular expressions are learning the proper syntax and the many operators. It is also useful to learn the history and general information about regular expressions.

What are the uses of regular expressions?

There are many uses for regular expressions, technically any type of pattern. Some examples are credit card validation, BBCode, and form validation. With the variety of programming languages supporting Perl style regular expressions there are tons of scenarios requiring regular expressions.

Using Regular Expressions in Programming Languages

Regular expressions have been implemented into most programming languages. They were first made popular, for programming languages, in Perl. Later the feature was implemented into other languages, such as PHP. Most programming languages implement a Perl style regular expression engine.